Writing

Our school-wide poetry unit has begun in earnest! We are so excited to be working on the same concepts and skills as students in other grades for reading and writing. This week, First Graders learned all about writing poems with rhythm and rhyme. They also learned that poets focus on big emotions when they think of topics for poems. We were inspired by nature for a day of poetry writing, and students could be seen tucked into little nooks around the backyard with their poetry notebooks, observing and listening to nature and writing new poems.

Math

First Graders are becoming very skilled at computation and using known strategies to solve problems. One type of problem that students love is the “fact family.” A Fact Family is a collection of related addition and subtraction facts made from the same numbers. For example, for the numbers 7, 8, and 15, the addition/subtraction fact family consists of 7 + 8 = 15, 8 + 7 = 15, 15 – 8 = 7, 15 – 7 = 8. It is an early introduction to the commutative property of addition for young children.

Centers

This week, our centers were filled with poetry! Students got to move between a number of centers to build their reading, writing, and memorization skills. At the “Mix-Up” center, a poem was written on sentence strips and then cut into individual words. Students tried to put it back together in a way that made sense. At “Memorization Masters,” students practiced memorizing and performing a simple 4-line poem. At the “Inspiration Station,” students used objects from home to inspire them to write new poems. We will be expanding our centers even more next week, so stay tuned!

Important Dates

• Friday, March 18 – Third Swim Lesson
• Saturday, March 26 – Sunday, April 3 – No School, Spring Break
• Monday, April 4 – School Resumes